First opened as “The People’s Palace” in 1873, Alexandra Palace provided the Victorians with a great environment and recreation centre. Just sixteen days after it’s opening, the Palace, which had already attracted over 120,000 visitors, was destroyed by a fire in the dome.
On 1st May 1875, less than 2 years after the destruction of the original building, a new Palace opened. Covering 7 acres, it was centred on the Great Hall, home to the mighty Willis Organ which was driven by two steam engines and vast bellows.
After certain financial difficulties, an Act of Parliament in 1900 created the Alexandra Palace and Park Trust. The Act required the Trustees to maintain the Palace and Park and make them “available for the free use and recreation of the public forever”.
In 1935, the BBC leased the eastern part of the building from which the first public television transmissions were made in 1936. Alexandra Palace was the main transmitting centre for the BBC until 1956, when it was used exclusively for news broadcasts.
You can view the panorama in QuickTime VR (4.1Mb).
Fantastic HDR panorama! (love the site btw)
I like how the building came out, but EW!, what happened to the sun?
HDR tonemapping is not the holy grail, you can still use photoshop to edit parts of the image that detract from the otherwise lovely depiction…
Can anyone use this image or is it as I suspect copyrighted?
I wanted to demonstrate how these QT VR things worked and this is one of th best looking one’s I have seen.
Thanks
Feel free to use it 🙂 A mention of where it came from would be nice.. but go ahead 🙂 The blog is all about sharing ideas etc..
Andy
– Ahoeben, i agree about the sun.. The building came out well and if i had time i would of sorted out the sun.
Superb work !! Really sharp image. I wondered about the sun too ?!